Exposé (Not Really) #5: Ode to The College Weirdo

I promise that this post will be shorter than my gardening experience.

Along with me, my fellow classmates of year 2006 are also fast approaching a large change in their lives. Whether it be a merging into the fast paced highway we call life (Life is a highway! I'm gonna ride it all night long- NOT! Just a friendly reminder not to drive when you're suffering from fatigue and not to drive at all if you're a truck driver on a sandy road) or continuing to endure- I mean, suffer- I mean ... ah, forget it; self-flagellate yourself into 4+ more years of expensive education, you are definitely due for a whole new look - a scrutiny of all the faults, more like - at life.

Well, that was a long sentence. That aside, I'm a big fan of metaphors and similes. I like to imagine moving from secondary school to university as kind of...an exchange of chalkboard slates, if you will. You get to toss out the old one - you know, the one with doodled genitalia and immature misspelt profanities scrawled across the surface - and in return, you get a clean slate. Too bad that new slate cost you an arm and leg. Expenses aside, at least your new friends won't know about how you mooned your maths teacher back in Grade 9.

What I'm trying to say is, most people try to take this opportunity to mould themselves into something they're not. Let me also take the time now to say to those few individuals...

IT'S NOT WORKING!!

Becoming more mature doesn't entail not being able to act like a fool. Okay, of course you're not supposed to blow raspberries in class and blame it on somebody else anymore, but it also doesn't mean that you suddenly have to restrict yourself from laughing at something funny just because it is considered "childish". It also doesn't mean that you aren't allowed to make mistakes and then laugh about the silliness of them.

Putting up a wall between the outside classy sophisticated person and the inside goofy fool ultimately gives everyone the impression that you're erecting a façade - a showy fake interpretation of who you want to be - and hiding from the world. Even if it is the other way around and you're actually a cold son of a b**** attempting to be nominated as the nicest university student of your year, that's no reason to pretend to be something you aren't. Save the acting for the drama club - you'll only feel fulfilled if you are loved for who you are.

Whether I'm trying to insinuate that it's not exactly a good idea to just leave your past life behind due to possibly blackmailing or that you can't hide from your friends who know about the incident with the ire-fay and the ysics-phay eacher-tay's oupee-tay, the point is that it's your life. The memories that inevitably come along with it are something that should be remembered and treasured no matter what. Pretending to be someone you're not is literally like chopping off a deformed goiter off the side of your neck. The lump of strange flesh might symbolize some unfriendly memories, but it's still a part of you and ridding yourself of it, no matter how mutated it (or your past) was, will definitely be something you will live to regret.

So I promised that this would be a short post. In closing: if, in the next while, you're walking around on campus and you see someone skipping around screeching songs in a foreign language, running after a bus and then realizing that they were chasing the wrong one or laughing loudly at inappropriate things in public ... remember that they're just being themselves and enjoying life without any inhibitions. (Unless, of course, they get really disruptive. Then ... feel free to tell them to shut up.)

Represent! Especially the bus chasing thing. Don't laugh!

Exposé (Not Really) #4: Breaking the Repose - Just dying to die

Raise your hand if you've ever seen those commercials with the old wrinkly people writing their wills with some money-leeching company. You know, the ones where some old lady says, "I'm glad that I got help from Wish You Were Dead LTD. with writing my will so I can rest easy knowing that when I pass, my children and grandchildren will receive my meager savings. Now I can do something constuctive that will save the world with the very small amount of time I have left, like GARDENING! I love GARDENING! *waters impossibly lush and bright garden*"

Oh yes, you have.

So to end the monotony of my life of being caged inside the house preparing for a piano exam, I decided to follow upon the old lady's steps. No, not to death. To a new hobby of gardening.

Today after dinner I impulsively decided to go outside, because earlier I had received an email stating some uses of salt. Apparently, if you sprinkle salt on the cracks between your sidewalks, it stops grass and weeds from growing there, ultimately helping you to avoid the nuisance of pulling them out later. Unfortunately for me, when I arrived on my front lawn I realized that the weeds and grass were already there, which meant I had to pull them out first.

So there I was, on my hands and knees in the dusk, poking and pulling at the soil between the cracks on my sidewalk. I thought it would be cooler later in the evening, but I also forgot about the MOSQUITOES. Not to mention that apparently I'm a homewrecker too, because when I was trying to unearth the weeds, PILL BUGS (Refer to the picture to the left), enough to possibly take over the world, began SWARMING from the patch of green death I was pulling at.

As the night and the cold began to blanket the city, people passing by also began staring at me as I cursed at the stubborn weeds and waved the screwdriver that I was using to dig them out with around in the air to fend off the flies lusting for my blood ... but I still consider myself lucky that I wasn't tending to flowers, because I HATE BEES. Halfway down the concrete path I gave up and went in before I froze to death.

So to conclude, I have 4 new mosquito bites, I have YET to see if that salt theory works, plus my Secret Garden (of Doom) pretty much consists of half a sidewalk with salt mixed in with the soil between the cracks.

I think I've figured something out, though. Gardening to old people is equivalent to doing jail time for us. The experience is harrowing, will shave a couple of years off your life, but when you come out suddenly you're the flavour of the entire retirement home. I'll bet a whispered conversation at the old home between two Golden Girls goes exactly like this:

"Did you hear? George from 205 just finished planting sunflower seeds in the courtyard."

"I heard! He's so gangsta'. I'd like to get in his Depends for some hanky-panky, if you know what I mean!"

Or maybe gardening isn't only for passing the time until you die. Maybe it's the unspoken method of slow suicide.

But of course, this is all speculation. So far, I only know two things for sure.

NOT GARDENING.











GARDENING.






















Until next time, readers.